Select and Refine in Paint by Zaweba for hair and fur

Hair is where most cut-outs fall apart. A selection that looks fine around a shoulder turns into a helmet once it reaches a head of curls, and stray strands either vanish or drag a strip of the old background with them. The Refine Edge workspace in Paint by Zaweba is the place to fix that, and it gathers everything you need for edge work into one screen.

Open it from Select > Refine Edge. You can arrive with a rough selection already made, or build one inside the workspace.

What the workspace gives you

Inside, there are seven views for looking at the selection. Different views suit different backgrounds: a dark edge is easier to judge against a light view, a light edge against a dark one, and a mask view shows exactly what is selected in plain black and white. Switching between them as you work is the quickest way to spot a halo or a gap.

The workspace has its own Quick Selection, Brush and Lasso, so you can add to or take from the selection without leaving. Then there's the Refine Brush, which is the reason most people open it. You paint it over the hair, and the edge under the brush is worked out again by alpha matting, keeping the fine strands with partial transparency.

Edge settings adjust the selection's border as a whole, and once you're happy you pick one of six outputs. Among them are New document and New document with layer mask, which are handy when you want the cut-out as a separate picture to drop into another design.

How it stays quick

Edge refinement on a large photo is heavy work. To keep the brush and views responsive, the workspace works on a copy up to 1600 pixels across while you adjust. When you press OK, the refinement is done again at full size on the real image. That means what you see while working is a preview, and the final edge is calculated from all the pixels you have.

The alpha matting here is classical, not AI. It looks at the colours either side of the edge and estimates how much of each pixel belongs to the object. No picture leaves your computer and nothing is sent to a service, which fits the rest of the app: it is offline, with no AI services and no telemetry.

Working method for hair

Start with a fair base selection. Foreground Extraction, Quick Selection or a careful lasso will do. Inside the workspace, choose a view that contrasts strongly with the hair colour. Then take the Refine Brush and paint along the hairline, covering the zone where solid hair turns into loose strands, plus a little of the background beyond. You don't need to trace every strand. The brush works on the band you paint and decides within it.

Move the brush in a few passes rather than one long scrub. Look at the result in a second view after each pass. If the brush has kept some background colour, a gentle change to the edge settings usually cleans it up.

For output, a layer mask is almost always the right answer. It keeps the hair editable later, and you can still paint on the mask with a soft brush if a few strands need help.

Mistakes worth avoiding

Painting the Refine Brush deep into the solid part of the subject is a common slip. The brush is meant for the uncertain fringe, and running it over a face or a jumper invites it to make parts of them partly transparent. Keep it on the edge.

Another mistake is judging on one view only. A selection can look perfect on white and show a pale fringe on black. Check at least two views before you press OK.

Finally, remember the preview copy. If the image is very large and you see something odd at a small scale, press OK and check the full-size result before starting over. The full-size refine is worked from every pixel, so it can look better than the preview suggested.

Where it sits in your workflow

Select and Refine is the finishing stage for a selection, not the first step. Make the rough shape with the fastest tool for the job, then bring it here for the edge, then send it out as a mask. Used that way, it turns hair, fur, feathers and soft-focus edges from a chore into a few minutes' work.